The brand new GeForce GTX 460 has turned up in two rather different flavours; the full version like Zotac's GTX 460 1GB and this the paired-down, slightly cut-price, 768MB version.

The GTX 460 is based on a new NVIDIA GPU and marks the first card sporting it.

We've gone into all the specifics of the GTX 460 architecture before, but basically it's based on the same GF 100 chip that keeps the GTX 480 going but with a more slimline approach.

There are fewer streaming microprocessors (SMs) but each of the new SMs carries more graphics cores, texture mapping units and other special function units.

The difference between the two spins of the GTX 460 though is totally down to the memory used. Both are running on GDDR5 but the 768MB version, as well as obviously having less memory, also suffers from a slower memory bus, fewer ROPs and less L2 cache.

EVGA's 768MB version of the GTX 460 is all about the reference design. The stock reference cooler is there and despite reports this GPU chiller wasn't up to it, we've found it doing its job quite admirably. Even with a hefty overclock attached to it.